By Felicia Imohimi
The Federal Government says the digitalisation of the cooperative sector is an economic and institutional reform aimed at strengthening the sector’s contribution to national development.
Sen. Aliyu Abdullahi, Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security and Supervising Minister of Cooperative Affairs, said this on Tuesday in Abuja.
He spoke at the National Technical Workshop on Cooperative Sector Digitalisation under the Renewed Hope Cooperative Reform and Revamp Programme (RH-CRRP) 2030.
Abdullahi said the workshop was important as it was aimed at moving from reform discussions to implementation.
He said the digitalisation programme would provide the foundational infrastructure required to connect cooperatives more effectively to finance, markets, government interventions and other economic opportunities.
Abdullahi identified the National Cooperative Smart Registry (NCSR) as the foundation of the transformation, saying it would support cooperative search, registration, verification and digital governance.
He said the infrastructure would facilitate the Cooperative Verification Number (CVN), which would provide a verifiable identity for cooperative organisations.
He added that the Cooperative Member Identification Number (CoopID) would provide a unique identity framework for cooperative members.
“Together, the NCSR, CVN and CoopID will constitute an important foundation for building trust, visibility and integrity within Nigeria’s cooperative ecosystem.
“This digital transformation is directly linked to the proposed Cooperative Bank of Nigeria (CoopBank).
“The NCSR, CVN and CoopID will provide the verified data, identity and trust infrastructure required for share subscription, credit profiling, risk management and the sustainable operation of the bank,” he said.
The minister said the RH-CRRP was designed to enable the country realise the economic and social potential of the cooperative movement by addressing key challenges.
He identified the challenges as governance, regulation, access to finance, institutional capacity, market access, inclusion, partnerships, data management and digitalisation.
“Under the Renewed Hope Agenda of the administration of President Bola Tinubu, we are determined to build a cooperative ecosystem that is modern, inclusive, transparent and accountable.
“It must also be capable of contributing significantly to food security, financial inclusion, job creation and shared prosperity,” he said.
Abdullahi said a major weakness of the cooperative ecosystem had been the absence of trusted and nationally coordinated digital infrastructure.
“Through digital infrastructure, we can know our cooperatives, verify them, understand their membership and build reliable data for planning and economic intervention.
“We cannot effectively finance what we cannot identify. We cannot properly regulate what we cannot see.
“We cannot build trust around institutions whose identities and records cannot be reliably verified,” he said.
The minister stressed that digitalisation must improve transparency and accountability, simplify cooperative administration and provide reliable information for policy and planning.
He tasked the Federal Department of Cooperatives, state directors of cooperatives, Cooperative Federation of Nigeria (CFN) and other stakeholders with treating implementation as a shared national responsibility.
Abdullahi noted that cooperative matters were on the concurrent legislative list, requiring collaboration between the Federal Government and states.
He said stronger collaboration was necessary to aggregate and coordinate the cooperative ecosystem for the benefit of members.
Earlier, Dr Marcus Ogunbiyi, Permanent Secretary in the ministry, said the workshop marked a major reform milestone in how the Nigerian cooperative ecosystem was organised, managed and scaled.
Ogunbiyi said cooperatives were strategically important to national food security, rural economic stability and grassroots empowerment.
He said the cooperative movement must transition from analogue operations to an integrated, secure and transparent digital architecture to meet modern commerce and governance demands.
He said the RH-CRRP 2030 was designed to modernise the cooperative sector, boost financial inclusion, address fraudulent practices and unlock capital for smallholder producers and cooperatives.
“The digital infrastructure we are building today, starting with the CVN and Smart Registry, will serve as the primary strategy for transparently delivering input subsidies and credit interventions.
“It will also serve as technical assistance directly to verified cooperators under the World Bank-assisted AGROW project,” Ogunbiyi said. (NAN) www.nannews.ng
FUA/TAK
Edited by Tosin Kolade